Soaked in Bleach

Today marks the 20th year since Nirvana's Nevermind album hit the shelves. This affords me the opportunity to put the political banter aside and write about my favorite time in this generation. I still remember watching the Smells Like Teen Spirit video for the first time. My mom screaming over Kurt's voice to turn down the volume. I was a huge Nirvana fan. Had all the albums, tee shirts, ripped jeans, Converse All-Stars, long hair.....that album was probably the reason that I learned how to play the guitar years later. I also remember that April morning when a utility worker found a body, minus the head, of a 27 year old rock star in the garage behind a suburban Seattle house. A rock 'n roll icon was dead.....again. (why can't we keep those guys around for more than 27 years?) When I got home from school that day, I sat in my parents basement with the lights off and listened to the Nirvana Unplugged album. I remember feeling sick to my stomach. I remember feeling like Kurt was in the room with me. I remember thinking that I wouldn't ever feel like this again. That moment will stick with me forever. Now that it's 20 years later and I look back, I think of what it would have been like without Nirvana, without the mosh pits, Converse, flannels. I think I would have learned the guitar eventually anyway, I think if it wasn't that teenage angst music, it would have been something else. I think that if Nirvana didn't rock the mainstream, someone else would have. But I'm not sure any of the other grunge rock bands of the time had the conviction to break out and put Seattle on the map the way Nirvana did. The truth is that Nirvana wasn't the first grunge rocking band. There was an entire scene of grunge rock that had been around for a decade before Nirvana had the cover of Rolling Stone. So what was it that made Nirvana so unique, so fascinating, so cool. I'll tell you, and if you're a fan you might want to stop reading. It's because they were cute. Nirvana had the Beatles edge. They were goofy, fun to watch, socially unpredictable. They shocked our hearts and minds with Christ Novecelic's tremendous bass toss on the VMA's (which lead to 6 stitches), the french kiss on SNL, the guitar beatings, drum temper tantrums and eventually of course Courtney Love. Obviously the music rocked like crazy, but without the social impact, Nevermind may have never changed the face of music. (and it helped having the best drummer of this or any other generation....and the only cool person that ever came out of ohio.)

The Nevermind album's influence was so powerful that it still has an impact on what we call "rock 'n roll" today. Bands like Nickleback, Stained, All That Remains, Seether, Blue October....all have a Nirvana undertone to them. They all follow Nirvana's melodic instrumentals and loud, sometimes incoherent, lyrics.

I could go on to discuss Nirvana's influence after the Nevermind album, but that's a whole other blog.

So today I solute the Nevermind album and hope that the next generation of rock 'n roll can match up to the standard set by the album that changed the world.